Ketchup

I’ve been all shagged out from the experience of moving. I’ve accumulated more books and furniture and STUFF in the five years I’ve lived in the same spot than I’d realized. And, as it turns out, moving it all in one big chunk (and trying to find places for everything in the new apartment) is pretty exhausting and stressful. Coming home to it every day, too, and being forced to reckon/deal with it is also stressful, so the sooner I figure out how everything should be, the sooner I can get back to my regularly scheduled program.

A list of things that are preying on my mind:

1.) Rugs. I need to get rugs for at least 2 rooms (living room and dining room for sure, and possibly something for the bedroom). The wood floors are pretty, but they’re HARD (I guess that’s why they call them ‘hardwood floors’) and I want to lay on the floor. My rabbits are also scared of the floors – too slidey! Powder will sometimes venture out and I can hear him scrabbling around. Poor guy. I’ve been out shopping for rugs about 3 times this week already. Went to Home Depot, Menards, Loews, World Market, TJ Maxx, Marshalls (2 locations), Home Goods (2 locations), and Walter E. Smith. I liked a few that I saw at Home Goods, possibly one at World Market (but it wasn’t as nice as the ones at HG), and several at Walter E. Smith (which was an experience in itself – I sat down with a salesperson and went through catalogs of rugs for a good hour…then she went and priced everything for me and I nearly passed out when I saw what nice rugs cost – the one I liked best has been discontinued by the manufacturer, so she’s going to check with her sales rep and get back to me on that one). After going to CSEC’s show at the Japanese Cultural Center last night (it was in a dojo!), I’m sort of tempted to just buy a bunch of martial arts mats and bounce around on those. Would probably be comparable in price to the rugs I’m looking at. Plus? Then I can learn aikido, kung fu, and other fighting arts in the comfort of my own home. Until I inevitably break some important part of my body. On second thought…

2.) Furniture. You know, I’ve never given it much thought before. I don’t have *nice* things. Probably because nice things are heavy, hard to move, and my rabbits would probably gnaw on the nicest things – making them not so nice. But, hey, maybe I could get something nicer in the future – like a dresser that doesn’t have a big hole in the back of it. Huh. I haven’t even embarked on the furniture shopping. I have to figure out the rugs first. I might even be semi-satisfied at that point.

3.) Painting. Ugh. How I wish I’d been able to get into this apartment at the beginning of January – not to live here, necessarily, but to PAINT it. There’s this shades of mauve going on that I’m not entirely happy with. I’d rather just have it all white. And what’s up with the glossy ceiling tiles? Nooo. Wrong.

4.) Cleaning. So, I left my old place sparkling clean. Mostly. And I moved into the new place and every radiator is caked with dust, the floors are filthy, and there’s ick in the kitchen cabinets. My mom spent 3 hours cleaning the bathroom. And there was a light-heavy coating of dust everywhere. While I don’t mind a little filth accumulating on my watch, I don’t like to arrive to (and be assaulted by) other people’s filth. Or even just this-apartment-has-been-empty-for-awhile filth. It’s filth. Clean it. I don’t want…er, scratch that…I *didn’t* want to move my *clean* things into a place that was dirty. But it takes time to clean things up – that I didn’t really have – which made me additionally frustrated. I’m possibly neurotic about this. Sorry. I just like things how I like them.

5.) Window treatments. Also not something I think about much. But, hey, blinds get really dusty and dirty when you never clean them. And dust makes me sneeze a lot. Dust=bad. I have blinds on EVERY window in this place. That’s a lot of dust accumulation. Most of them are already full of dust and grime (the ones in my bedroom are new, thank goodness). I’m thinking, though, that I’d rather not have to deal with cleaning them while I’m here (and/or replacing them when I move – because I will likely move again at some point). So what do I do about covering the windows if I take them down? Hm. Curtains. But I can’t put any hardware into the walls…so whatever I rig has to be with tension rods or cobbled together with picture rail hooks and curtain rods. I’m not sure how this is going to work exactly (nor do I have any curtains picked out). I have spent some time researching what is available, however, and I have some options. It’s not completely hopeless.

6.) And while I’m thinking about all of the above, I keep noticing the very noticeable dips in the floors – and thinking how if you set a ball or a marble down on one side of the room, it would roll across to the other side, because the floors are WAY uneven. Should I be…disturbed by this? The floors in my other place were also uneven – particularly obvious in the kitchen.

7.) I’d really like my own house, plz. K. Thx. Bai.

On Saturday night, after Oberon went home, I sat down and had a good cry – because I was *so* tired and so distressed and there was still so much to do, and not enough time to set all to rights before having to return to work on Monday. I only have so much energy to expend as it turns out. I moved a few more things around and then went to bed. Felt MUCH better on Sunday morning.

I’ve been giving myself a lot of breaks. Because I could easily just walk back and forth 1000 times trying to decide things – everything all at once – I have been cutting myself off and forcing my brain to RELAX. Which means I might actually finish that book I’ve been reading for the last month (that AND A Little Princess), and I might get to bed on time.

Pared down some more things – requiring several trips to the donations boxes in the Jewel parking lot, a trip home to mom (had several things she was able to use), and a few freecycle listings (waiting right now to see if someone picks up my old computer speakers). It’s like losing weight. And I might actually eat more normally if I could prepare stuff in my kitchen. But, you know, that’s another thing – I have no kitchen counters. It’s shocking. And I don’t know how I managed to miss that. Add that to the must-have’s list for future living situations. I should make that list. I should make it NOW.

Morning

I’m in bed still, because I can’t quite convince my body that it’s time to get up. It isn’t really! I had plans to just check on the weather and then get up and do things…but you can see how well that’s working!

Mom asked me what I want to move first when they come out to help on Friday, and I honestly don’t know. It’s not like I haven’t thought about it, it’s just that I’ve come to the conclusion that I really don’t know what should go first, second and so on and so forth. And after wracking my brain about it, I’m not any closer to making that decision. It doesn’t matter so long as everything gets moved and we put the boxes in the appropriate rooms. I did mark everything as to where it was in my current place…not that I’m set on keeping that setup once I’m moved. I shall just relax and not worry about it too much. It will be fine. Right? Right.

All the time I’ve spent in the pool is wreaking havoc on my skin. It is all dry and itchy. I may need to slather myself in protective unguents before I swim. And last night? One of the newer people (we’ve had a bunch join the class this month – must be that New Year’s resolution thing) told me that he hated me because I have too much energy and he’s always stuck behind me watching me jump around. He was trying to be funny, but hate is a rather strong word. Anyway, I have decided that he shall be my water aerobics nemesis and we shall spur one another on to even greater feats of…whatever. Because I’m competitive like that. And also? Because I can kick his ass.

Of bird days

I know a lot of people with January birthdays.  Sometimes I think they’re the only people I *really* get along with.  And then I remember Peloquin and how he’s a Leo (July) and wonder how the heck *that* particular friendship ever happened.  Oh yeah.  Astrology?  Maybe not the best system.

We went to Benihana’s today to celebrate my dad’s birthday – he had a coupon for $30 to spend on his meal (only his, not anyone else’s).  He ended up ordering off the lunch menu, which didn’t make a huge dent in his $30, so we encouraged him to get some sushi, too.  Dragon roll!  Our meal was delicious, and our cook was Gerardo (hair-ahr-dough), who said he’d only been working there a week (this may have been part of his banter).  He didn’t stab anyone with his knives or spatulas, and his shtick was pretty entertaining.  Plus, he was good at bantering with me and my family (the other people sitting with us occasionally watched appreciatively, but didn’t really interact with him).  I had fillet mignon for the first time (Gordon Ramsay made me curious about it – what can I say?), and it was delicious.  I can’t say that I’ve ever had beef that tender before.  I also had some really fantastic strawberry lemonade.

We went over to Ikea afterward – dad had asked for a down pillow from there (after sampling one at his cousin’s house when they went a-visitin’ earlier this fall).  The relatives got him a GPS instead (and there was much grumbling about how they shouldn’t bother to ask him for gift suggestions if they were just going to go out and get him whatever they wanted anyway).  It was a freakin’ madhouse – which I’d expected, it being Sunday afternoon.  The Ikeazens were annoying, and I didn’t see anything I wanted.  Well, not yet, anyway.  I seem to recall that there’s no counter/prep space in my new apartment (will have the lowdown on this at the end of this week), so my brother and I checked out some possible solutions in the kitchens department.  They had some butcher block prep tables that didn’t look as hideous as the ones I’d looked at online, and one narrow table that would do nicely up against a wall.  I took a few pictures.  May go back once I know what I need.

This week has been pack pack pack.  Almost everything is ready to go.  Piles piles piles everywhere.  My current apartment was shown today.  As far as I can tell the visitors were respectful of my stuff – the only thing I noticed was that someone had opened the blinds in my bedroom.  The sign is still up in the window, so I’m not sure if they decided to take it (and have to wait for a credit check) or if I’ll have to accommodate *other* visitors in my last week here.

Bit the bullet yesterday while I was waiting for Oberon to come over – I called AT&T.  I had been dreading it because everything with them seems to take forever.  Ok, maybe not.  I didn’t have any trouble switching to T-mobile!  But that’s because T-mobile did it all for me.  No, I was dreading it (this time) because I wanted to change my existing service to their DSL sans phone service plan, AND move it to my new address.  I had hoped that I could just do that on their website.  No dice.  And it really irritates me when companies (like AT&T) push you to use their site and then make it impossible for you to transact your business through it.  While I was on hold, the on hold music was periodically interrupted with automated messages encouraging me to use the website – because I might be able to get a better deal!  Well, hell yes, I will!  Except that you can’t get a better deal on canceling your phone service – unless, perhaps, you pull the plug yourself.

They have a new feature on their site where you can chat with someone from the company while you’re placing your order.  Unfortunately, all they’re able to do is walk you through the process of placing your order online.  They can’t actually *do* it for you or help you with your account.  Which is pretty lame.  I mean, you’ve already got them there…  I suppose they’re worried about insecure transmissions of data and people screwing with other people’s accounts.  Whatever.  It sure would be nice if you could just get online, chat with a rep, and have them do whatever it is that needs to be done.  Alternatively, I’d settle for a convenient way to just do it myself online through my account.  But, no.  I got several error messages when I tried to change my DSL service to DSL only – “looks like you already have DSL!”  Yeah, no duh.  I’m trying to *change* what I have!  And then I was given several phone numbers (all incorrect) for customer service.

So I finally called customer service.  And the automated system didn’t accept any of my numbered choices and couldn’t figure out my phone number when I keyed it in.  What??  After it apologized several times for not understanding me, it put me on hold.  And I tried the website again.  And failed again to find any way to do what I needed to do.  So I called back.  And this time *spoke* my phone number.  It put me on hold for the “next available representative” for about 10 minutes.  The next available representative was very helpful and was able to create a new DSL order for me (I wasn’t particularly amused by her attempts to sell me other services or package deals – but I figure it’s something she’s forced to do by people who are higher up in the business, and not something she personally decided to foist upon me).  But then she said she was going to have to transfer me to the “disconnect department” to help me cancel my current service.  Which I believe is BULLSHIT.  Because I went right back into the same phone queue where I waited about 30 minutes for the next available representative.  She seemed a little thrown when I told her I’d been waiting for the “disconnect department,” but she was able to do what I needed her to do.  I think.  I mean, it’s all up in the air until I find out on Friday whether either request was actually processed correctly.  One hopes.  *I* hope.

I’m not really irritated yet.  Yes, I spent at least an hour screwing around online and on the phone in my attempts to process a request that should have taken 10 minutes AT THE MOST to handle by an efficient company interested in keeping my business.  Because I had time to do this and no other pressing engagements it wasn’t a terrible inconvenience.  But, you know, I didn’t need the dread building up to it, nor should I have had to sacrifice that hour.   I particularly object to the disconnect scam.  If a rep can order me up a new plan, she can certainly cancel the old one.  I’d rather not have to switch mid-order/mid-rep and have to explain my situation all over again to yet another person.  Adding MORE representatives to the mix is just adding additional opportunities for AT&T to screw up my request.  I don’t understand why this should be rocket science.  So, it’s my personal (paranoid) belief that they just put me on hold with the hope that I’d be too irritated to wait for the next person to help me cancel my old service.  And then they could rack up some kind of fees or late payments or whatever it is that they do to their remaining customers in order to stay in business.

Yay.  Bloated corporate inefficiency!

Disassemble!

Johnny 5 is alive!  NO disassemble!

So, you’d think that I’d have grasped certain computery things by now.  And, perhaps, somewhere deep in my subconscious, I actually have – but I am still pleasantly surprised occasionally when things just work.  I am boxing up my desktop computer today – for the move – and was a little worried that I’d have to keep something connected to the DSL modem/router in order to have access to the internets.  Forgetting, I guess, that I turned on the wireless function on the modem/router, which appears to work whether or not it’s connected to the computer.  I enabled the wireless once I had a laptop to connect with, but never detached the direct hookup from the router.  Presumably this is how it is all supposed to work and I’d just never considered the implications of *actual* wireless before.  Silly me.  Anyway, now I can – with reckless abandon – disassemble my computer (and the desk it’s sitting on) and continue my love affair with the internets until I move.  Except that I should probably contact AT&T about moving my services.  Yeah.  Not looking forward to that.

Oh don’t get me started…

I was helping someone find audiobooks for their kids (14 and 10 and 8, maybe?) for a long drive – he wanted something everyone could listen to and enjoy and they’d loved Harry Potter.  When I started recommending other fantasy titles (with magical elements) he backpedaled and said, yeah, well, something with less magic (no magic would be best) because they – or perhaps it was just his wife – were Very Religious, and it had taken him months of work to convince her to try the Harry Potter stuff.  Ok.  [I really hate this, but have arrived at 'whatever' and 'people are crazy' and can mostly move on...]  He was picking up different books and asking me about them, and if I’d read them I’d give him my opinion.  He came to the Maximum Ride series (James Patterson), and asked me how I’d liked those.  Yeah.  I am so thoroughly sick of James Patterson – it almost makes me angry whenever he publishes a new book, especially for kids/teens, because they’re such…crap.  There, I said it.  Kids like them, though – short chapters, conflict/resolution ad infinitum, repetitious, action action action, and they probably feel like they’ve accomplished something after having ‘finished.’  That’s fine, too.   But I hate them.  So when he asked me about them, I said, “Oh, your kids will probably love them – they’re full of action, exciting.”

“But what do *you* think?”  Yeah.  I probably shouldn’t have said anything.  *My* opinions of stuff do not really matter most of the time when I’m helping people find things to read.  It’s about finding something new for them that they’d enjoy, not something that I’d enjoy.  And sometimes?  We have very different thoughts on what’s good.  People get that concept subconsciously – where they just decide to read whatever the heck they want regardless of what you tell them – but consciously they will still solicit opinions.  So I told him what I thought – “I hate these books.”  And when he asked me why, the first thing that popped out of my mouth was, “because they’re FACILE.”  They’re poorly written, without attention to detail, without care, without any apparent pride in authorship.  If Gordon Ramsay (superstar chef) had served something comparable at one of his restaurants, he’d be so embarrassed and dismayed he’d probably first gun down his staff and them himself.  (I’ve been watching a lot of Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Disasters recently.)  And sure, there are plenty of other books that fit that same bill, but they don’t have these conceited people behind them telling us that they’re GREAT or even GOOD.  They’re what they are – entertaining fluff – and no one tries to pretend differently.  Except JP.  And that is the ultimate reason for my loathing.  If he honestly believes that the drivel he writes for that age group can rank among the best he is SORELY mistaken, and he’s lying to everyone.  I hate overblown, windbag, conceited liars.  Obviously.  You probably do, too.  But you might still enjoy James Patterson.

I’ve also been known to rant (privately) about the Twilight series (which is, incidentally, MUCH better than Maximum Ride).  Oberon sent me a link to something awhile ago about how Bella wanted perfection and suggested I post my response here.  So I’m finally doing that.  Read on:

Bella’s aggressive because she’s mortal and she has dreams/visions about what she’ll be like in 60 years and what Edward – her vampire lover – will be like.  And she can’t deal with the disparity.  She’s hearing her biological clock ticking, and she doesn’t want to hear what it has to say, so she wants to be transformed so she can be *young* forever.  And because she’s head over heels, she wants to be with Edward forever – because that’s what you’re supposed to want when you’re 17.  The world tells you that.  You fall in love, you need/want to be with that person forever all the time, etc. etc.  Even if you don’t.  Even if you have nothing to talk about except, “Hey make me into a vampire, god I love you, let’s smooch.”  And also, “Geez, your blood makes me all gooey inside and I want to drink you.”  And, “Uh-oh.  All my vampire friends want to drink you, too.  Now we’ve got *problems*”

Perfection is an illusion.  It might seem perfect to be pretty and young forever, and super powerful (because apparently it’s better to have Bella be invincible than to have any actual competition – boring!).  But forever is a long time.  And Bella is such a child.  And if I were Edward, I’d be sick of her pretty quickly.

If there is a “perfect” it’s myriad and changing.  Because *we* are myriad and changing and no one has the same vision of what perfect is.  Perfection, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  I’m sure that there are philosophers (most particularly Plato, but many others, too – those who have argued that God is perfection) who would disagree with me.  Plato though that forms, those visions of perfection that we have, all existed for real somewhere.  I think they just exist in our heads.  And no one has precisely the same ones.

I Capture the Castle

Last page…

“Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with ‘I love you, I love you’ – like father’s page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn’t warrant a waste of good paper.

“There’s a light down in the castle kitchen. To-night I shall have my bath in front of the fire, with Simon’s gramophone playing. Topaz has it on now, much too loud – to bring father back to earth in time for tea – but it sounds beautiful from this distance. She is playing the Berceuse from Stravinsky’s ‘The Firebird.’ It seems to say, ‘What shall I do? Where shall I go?’

“You will go into tea, my girl – and a much better tea than you would have come by this time last year.

“A mist is rolling over the fields. Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?

“There was mist on midsummer eve, mist when we drove into the dawn.

“He said he would come back.

“Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

What are you preparing?

You’re always preparing!  Just go!  This is almost my philosophy of life.  Except that I’m usually pretty well prepared and I don’t take well to others being poorly prepared (if it affects my own experience).  But I don’t think that the preparation should take up so much time that one never goes at all. 

***

I found an apartment!  And I signed a lease!  And I’ll be moving the last 3 days of January.  And I don’t feel sick to my stomach anymore with anxiety about it.  (Indecision bugs me.)  Ok, I did take a few minutes to admire my painting handiwork in my bedroom last night – how fresh and clean it looked, how bright, how high the ceilings are.  I have acres and acres of airspace above me.  I’m going to miss that.  The new place has some questionable ceiling tile, which I shall examine more carefully when I move in.  [My new landlord/property manager is also somewhat more…discerning about what tenants can do to alter their accomodations – which I appreciate and support, because it means he cares, and *I* care, too, for the spaces that I come to inhabit – so, I have to clear any changes I make with him before making them.  This discussion arose because I asked if I could repaint some of the rooms and he wanted to know about my level of experience, and what colors, etc.  I’m going to bring in some paint chips and decide and then run it by him.  I really like it that he’s a handy fellow, though (and he drives one of those handyman mobiles – the trucks with all of the interesting drawers and compartments for one’s tools).

I took some before pictures while I was over there (signing the lease) the other day, so I could think about where I wanted to put things.  Mostly they reassure me that it isn’t awful, and that there will be enough space for me and my stuff, and that I haven’t made a horrible, horrible decision (at least, not based on looks alone).  I don’t want to feel regret.  They are here if you, too, would like to console yourselves by viewing them.

***

I almost, almost brought up what boxes I have stashed away in my storage space last night to start going through my collection of books – pack, give away, read and decide…  I have just a few weeks!  I shall be the most organized ever!  Until the last minute when I discover how much there still is to do and I just cart it all over in heaps.  HEAPS.

But, people have offered to help with the moving of the things (which is most excellent), and my friend of the tattooing shop also has a truck, which she’s going to bring out for mooooving day!  And I shall adore her forever for this.  I hope my bed fits (in her truck AND in its new room).  I’ve not had the best experiences renting from the truck rental places.

Apartment search continues

This weekend I looked at three different places (almost four, except the contact for the last place has no answering machine/service, so I can’t leave a message saying that I’d like to know more, please call me back).

The first one was in a large old house – paint literally peeling off the exterior.  I passed by it several times on my walk-around-town-to-see-what’s-what excursions, and when the landlord told me where it was I wondered, “Could it be *that* house?”  It was.  So, my next thought – to comfort myself – was “Maybe it’s nicer on the inside.”  It was.  But it’s also still full of some other person’s stuff – mostly office equipment (computers, chairs, tables, furniture) who was described to me as “some homeless guy” who may (or may not) have moved to Florida.  He hasn’t been back in a long time.  (Should they maybe change the locks?)  The upstairs apartment was touted as being the showcase space.  And there were things I really liked about it – it was bright and sunny, and there was a window seat and two built in bookcases.  But this didn’t make up for the fact that the bathroom had no floor (just the plywood base), and the kitchen had a refrigerator that looked like it was from the 1940s.  None of the rooms were very large, and there was a creepy attic space (touted as the lovely 3rd floor studio!) – dark (windows were covered), poorly insulated (brr), and the floor looked like it might be ready to go in some places.  I really couldn’t get that excited about it.  The downstairs apartment still had the homeless guy’s stuff in it (as mentioned above), but it was a more livable space – kitchen remodeled, bathroom floor present, etc.  But the bathroom was Pepto-Bismol pink (ugh), the stove was electric, and the rooms were dark-ish.  It was just really hard to tell how much space there actually was because of all the crap that was still there.

I wonder why people don’t make more of an effort to show places at their best?  Really clean them up, make them shine, make them actually look desirable!  Seems like a no-brainer to me.

What the landlord was, however, was flexible.  He was ok with any improvements I wanted to make (painting, whatever), ok with my rabbits, ok with paying the utilities, ok with my gardening in the yard…  All of that was pretty exciting.  I appreciate his being willing to let me make the space my own (there are lots of rentals that don’t let you change anything).  But, after thinking about it and all of the work that needed to be done, it started feeling more like a fixer-upper rental – which still wouldn’t be mine after I put in all of the effort/work to make it livable.  And I’m not really sure I want to expend all of that effort for someone else.

I sat in my car for about 20 minutes after looking at the house, talking to my folks about all of the possibilities – and subsequently wondering if they’d ever be realities.  Would I have time to make improvements with work, and commuting, and all the other stuff I do, or would it just become a hassle?  What if the homeless guy comes back?  What if my landlord is a complete flake?  He’s owned the house for 2 years, but hasn’t rented it in that time.  I’m not even sure if he has a rental procedure nailed down.  I’d personally feel more comfortable with someone who has some experience…although, my current landlords are new to the whole property management thing and they’re doing pretty well.  Eh.

I drove home through a snow storm to think about it some more.

Today, I was back to see another apartment.  This one was also in a house (smaller house), but on the other side of the main thoroughfare.  It was…not ideal.  The landlord seemed more experienced with how the whole rental thing should go, but the space just wasn’t what I was looking for.  Electric stove (I have developed a preference for gas), small rooms, everything carpeted, tiny strange closets, bathroom fixture not working…  Oberon came with me and noted that the other tenants could be heard moving around upstairs.  Basement had a lot of random clutter in it, and the washing machine and dryer looked pretty old.  Horrible, horrible chandelier in the dining room – that *I* almost knocked my head on when walking through (and I’m not *that* tall).  I hate ugly fixtures, and fancy wallpaper, and this place had both.  I took the application – not sure why – even though I knew pretty much immediately that it wasn’t the place for me.

Prior to making that drive, I looked at a place here in town that is literally a block and a half away from where I’m currently living.  It, too, is in a big old house (I say that I prefer these quaint, quirky places, but I’m also starting to want nicer appliances, W/D actually in the unit, and somewhere to put my all-t00-familiar-with-the-weather car), but it was nicer (and cleaner) than the other places.  Gas stove (plus!), large living room, bathroom tolerable shade of white with black & white floor tile, large sunny room (which may have been a porch at one time), W/D in unfinished basement, but for my use only (yay!), and 1-car garage – plus it’s $100 less than I’m paying now and includes all utilities except electric.  That’s not bad.  It’s a bit smaller than what I have now, and I think my bed would take up the entire bedroom…and there’s a dropped tile ceiling in at least one of the rooms that I don’t like at all, but the floors are pretty nice, and I think I could make it work.   I just don’t know if I want to go through the bother of moving (1.5 blocks away)…

When I write up my mental pros and cons list it’s still not as nice as the place I have now, though, it *is* cheaper, and it’s not located right next to a bar.  Plus, there is no place for the other tenants to loiter and smoke (we have back porch balconies where I live and the downstairs people who moved in recently smoke A LOT).  Right now (because it’s winter and I have no reason to go hang out on my back porch – not that I do this much, anyway) it’s really easy for me to say, “It’s not so bad.  I love my apartment.”  Because I do love it – the inside.  The location wouldn’t be bad either, except that it’s too convenient for random people to just hang out on the stairs leading up to the quaint shopping area – smokers, bar patrons, severely inebriated bar patrons, and people having huge fights with their significant others on their cell phones.  It’s not what you’d call private in that sense – no matter what the place is zoned.  Smoke and noise bother me a LOT when it’s warm enough to have all of my windows open.  So, basically, I’d be moving to get away from the annoyances.  But I don’t want to lose the advantages either.

I’d also like to move closer to the city – not because I’m dying to pay more rent (places are generally more expensive the closer in one gets), but because it sure would save me some time and gas to be closer to the people/places I tend to visit.  And, hey, maybe people would visit *me* more often, too, if I were more convenient for them.  But there are only so many communities where I’d want to live, and only so many types of housing…and I seem to get pickier and pickier with each passing year.  I’ve become a woman with Preferences and even Requirements, and it’s damned inconvenient sometimes.

Moving a block and a half away obviously doesn’t get me any closer to my proximity goal.  I don’t think it even cuts a minute off the drive… *grin*

So, after all of that I’m a little bit disheartened, because I wanted to find something perfect and new and I didn’t (which makes me feel like I never will).  I’ve been a little lost in my thoughts about it all day – worrying about whether I should keep looking or give up, whether I should tell my landlords that I’m looking but I want to extend my lease because I haven’t found anything yet, whether I should just renew my lease for another year and then go through this again next January…  It’s rather exhausting, and my enthusiasm for the process may have peaked with the first house.  Why is everything crap?  Do people just not care about spaces that they don’t actually own?

I think the hardest part for me is imagining my stuff in the new space.  What’s going to fit, what’s going to go where.  It didn’t matter much when I moved out here – I had very little stuff and the space was huge.  Now I have more stuff, and I’m looking at smaller places and wondering how it will all work out.  I could pare down my stuff, or trade in some old stuff for some new stuff (but that’d be another expense), or move it around a lot in the new place…which I will probably do anyway because I’m like that.  Maybe I just need to remind myself that nothing shook down immediately for this space either.  I have moved things around a bunch of times – and moved them back when the configurations didn’t work out.  And it’s taken 5 years for things to settle.  And I *still* like to move stuff around.

If I stay, then, what I should do is move stuff around – because obviously I need some kind of change – and buy a nice piece of furniture (say, a chest of drawers for my bedroom), so at least one thing will be new.  I’m so sick of buying crap furniture that falls apart or doesn’t look like I want it to.  Someone please remind me of this next time I get a hankering to walk around Ikea.  For goodness sake, kaysootee, get some decent shelves/dressers/etc.  Ok.  OK.

I have made another list of places to call.  I hate making these phone calls.  And questions to ask.  And…maybe I will go and see them, too.  I just don’t anticipate liking anything now, and that’s taken the wind out of my sails.  And also?  I have to pee.  Going to take care of that.  Buh-bye.

Mondegreen

I always thought that in the song, “The Waiting,” Tom Petty was singing “the way it is, is the hardest part,” which I think is equally true.  Waiting, way it is – both are difficult for me.

Early to bed, early to rise

It’s so true.  I fell asleep at 9:30 last night, so naturally I’m  up at 4:30 this morning…not exactly pleased about that, but I feel well-rested.  I guess 7 hours of sleep is what I’m going to get.  Going to wish I’d been able to sleep longer when I’m at work tonight, but there’s really nothing I can do about that now.

I had a run in with one of our former volunteers this past weekend.  He’s a middle-aged man with some sort of mental affliction that makes it difficult for him to understand/relate to other people.  He often voices his inner thoughts, and when he becomes agitated he can be off-putting, even scary.  Our volunteer coordinator was ok with his quirks, but I think he made a lot of other staff really uncomfortable, so they let him go.  (I’m not sure what happened.  I noticed that he wasn’t around volunteering, but no one mentioned any incidents that led to that – he actually confirmed it when he stopped in this weekend).

He wanted me to put a book on hold for him – “Somebody Somewhere.”  It’s the sequel to “Nobody Nowhere,” which I read not too long ago.  I do.  It makes me want to ask him if he’s autistic, but that’d be prying.  And maybe he doesn’t want to talk about it.  So I just ask him if it’s the sequel to the other book and he says that he thinks so.  Things seem to be going ok, except that he’s pacing back and forth in front of the desk – distracting, but not life-threatening.

Then he asks if I can renew a few books for him.  I say, “Let me check.”  I say this for 2 reasons.  1.) Technically people are supposed to renew items at the Checkout desk, and not at Reference.  Not that we can’t.  It’s just The Way Things Are.  I think that it’s sometimes less convenient to send people back and forth between the two desks – especially if things are really busy up at Checkout (as they were) – so I’ll do it on occasion.  2.) Things don’t just renew because you want them to.  If a hold has been placed on an item, then the system will not allow one to renew it. “Uh-oh,” he says to himself, “she’s gonna check.”

I ask him for his card and I see that there are a couple of other books checked out that he did not mention.  So my next question to him is, “Did you want all of these books renewed?”  And at that point he explodes.  “I didn’t ASK you to renew them.  I asked if you COULD renew them.”  [And my answer at this point is still 'I don't know,' because I haven't *tried* any of them.  It is way faster to just select what you want to renew and hit 'Enter' and see what renews and what fails than it is to go in and look up every item to see what has holds on it.]  I decide it’s not really worth getting into this with him.  He’s now muttering about how someone at work got him canned and how everyone is out to get him, etc. etc.  He’s not loud/disruptive/disturbing to other patrons, but he’s definitely upset with me.  I say, “Ok.  Yes.  Yes I can renew them.”  I have actually already done so.  They all renewed.  Whether or not he wanted ALL of them renewed.  Whether or not he *actually* wanted me to renew them instead of just wanting to know whether or not they *could* be renewed.  He continues to wonder (aloud) why people can’t just answer the questions that they’re asked.  The part of me that wants to be RIGHT reeeeeeally reins herself in.  Because she wants to explain exactly why his question isn’t simple and how the system works and why I asked him a question instead of immediately answering his.  She also wants to ask him why the hell he would even bother asking if I *could* renew those items if he didn’t actually *want* me to.  I tell that part of me to breathe deeply and let it go.  I still wonder, though, if it would have made any difference in his attitude if I’d tried to explain why.  Would he have understood?  Or was he already too worked up?  I erred on the side of “already too worked up.”

He announces that he HATES it when people don’t answer his questions.  I chuckle and say that I can understand that.  This is exactly the wrong response, because he gets even more upset, “Why are you LAUGHING?”  And here, too, I could explain why I’m laughing.  1.) Human beings laugh to diffuse tension.  We often smile to show that we’re harmless.  That we aren’t intending any offense.  2.)  Oberon just told me how much he hates it when his boss calls him while he’s out on the road and asks him one thing, when he means another – which drives O. crazy.  Which is completely the opposite of this patron’s problem, but still the same thing.  And, people who come to the Reference Desk often don’t ask the questions that they want the answers to.  So a lot of our work is asking follow up questions to get at what it is they really want (the term for this in library literature is the ‘reference interview’).  So, when people ask me if I can renew something, I assume they actually want me to renew it.  And that it’s not just idle curiosity.  Because that’s stupid.  All of this is sort of funny.  And I can relate.  Except that I can’t.  So I stop trying to put either of us at ease and just stop responding to any of his outbursts – except direct questions.

He rants and paces a bit longer.  And then asks if that other book is on hold for him.  I say, “Yes, and we’ll let you know when it arrives for you.”

“Ok,” he says.  “Ok.”  And he goes up to the Checkout Desk and I hope, hope, hope that he’s got himself under control again and doesn’t give them any grief.

About 30 minutes go by and he returns.  I don’t know if he’s been in the building the whole time or if he went away and came back.  He’s noticeably calmer.  He says, “I just wanted to come back and say I’m sorry.  I have a hard time communicating with people sometimes.”  This is…surprising, but welcome.  I don’t want to upset him any more than I already have, so I say, “Thanks.  Thanks for coming back to say that.  I appreciate it.”  And we part on ok terms.